This Labor Day weekend was the slowest in a decade on the I-70 mountain corridor, but not by much.
Just over 180,000 vehicles traveled the Eisenhower-Johnson tunnels in four days, Friday into Monday. That is down 3.5 percent from the past two years, down as much as 9.5 percent from the record high in 2019 when 198,862 vehicles traveled I-70 through Summit County.
4-day Labor Day traffic (at the Eisenhower-Johnson tunnels)
- 2025… 180,061
- 2024… 187,419
- 2023… 186,179
- 2022… 188,804
- 2021… 183,954
- 2020… 183,072
- 2019… 198,862
- 2018… appx. 192,000
- 2017… 192,681
- 2016… 184,641
- 2015… 174,652
The last time Labor Day traffic slipped below 180,000 vehicles was 2015 with more than 174,000 vehicles in four days. Before then, this final holiday of summer was averaging 164,000 cars. In the late 2010s, the average skyrocketed to 188,000 cars. It has been hovering around 185,000 cars since the pandemic.
Summer falls short
Looking back on three months of summer – June through Labor Day, historically the busiest time on the mountain corridor – this year showed another dip in traffic. Nearly 1.78 million vehicles traveled the tunnels on weekends only, down from last summer by 58,000 vehicles, and down from the record highs of 2019 by 156,000 vehicles.
In 2019, 1.93 million cars took I-70 through Summit led by two of the top-three busiest weekends of all time: Father’s Day weekend with roughly 163,000 vehicles and the first weekend in August with 156,000 vehicles.